James Hayman - The Cutting

McCabe figured the girl was most likely killed somewhere else and the body dumped here later. If so, he’d find little in the way of evidence. He saw no blood on the ground, and the blood on the body was dried and old. A greenish cast of decomposition was beginning to show on her abdomen. Katie Dubois had been dead a while. McCabe guessed at least forty-eight hours.

The ground was stone hard, so he doubted he’d find any footprints or tire tracks, but he watched where he walked and looked anyway. Also, he saw nothing to suggest the body had been dragged the thirty or so yards from the street. No bent clusters of weeds. No visible scrapes of dirt around the girl’s heels or head or shoulders. He figured the killer carried Katie to where he dumped her. No great feat. She couldn’t have weighed more than 110 pounds even before she lost most of her blood. The killer would have gotten some of that blood on his clothes. Possible evidence unless he burned them.

He played his light over the girl’s body, inch by inch. The cut down the middle of her chest looked as careful and clean as if it had been made with a razor or possibly a surgeon’s scalpel. The burn marks were recent and deliberate. In the lobe of her right ear he found a small gold earring with a dangling heart-shaped charm. He moved the light to the left ear. The lobe was torn, and the mate to the earring, assuming there was a mate, was gone. Accidentally caught on something? Maybe. Roughly pulled out? Possibly. Taken as a trophy? More likely. Her navel was pierced with a silver-colored semicircular bar with tiny metal balls at either end. A blue tattoo that looked like a Chinese or maybe Japanese character adorned the skin above her left hipbone. A twenty-first-century teen.

The crime scene techs arrived and began drawing their diagrams and taking their pictures. McCabe pointed out the remaining earring and asked the senior tech, Bill Jacobi, to make sure to check for both prints and DNA. Jacobi gave him a ‘So what do you think, I’m stupid?’ look in response.

‘Looks like somebody started the autopsy without me.’ McCabe turned at the sound of a woman’s voice. Deputy State Medical Examiner Terri Mirabito stood behind him, looking at the body. ‘I think I resent that,’ she added, ‘both on her behalf and mine.’

‘Good to see you, Terri. Glad you’re here.’ McCabe had worked with her on half a dozen cases over the past three years and valued her skills.

After photographing the body from several angles, Mirabito knelt down for a closer look. ‘How long do you think she’s been dead?’ McCabe asked.

‘A while. She’s out of rigor. Only slight lividity.’ With gloved hands, she gently pulled back the fold of tissue on the left side of the girl’s chest. McCabe could see what appeared to be grains of rice inside the cut. Only the rice was moving. Maggots.

‘Judging by the activity in there, I’d say she was killed forty-eight to seventy-two hours ago. Maybe a little longer depending where the body was kept.’ Terri pulled the skin back a bit further. ‘Well, sonofabitch, will you look at that?’

‘What? What is it?’

Terri looked up, a grim expression on her face. ‘Her heart’s gone.’

‘What do you mean, gone?’

‘Just what I said, McCabe. Gone. As in not there.’ Terri was shining a small high-intensity light into the girl’s exposed chest cavity. ‘Some creep opened her up, cut through her sternum with a saw, and removed her heart. I couldn’t have done it cleaner myself.’

Neither said anything for a moment. ‘Ritual murder?’ he finally asked.

‘Beats the hell out of me. Whoever did it, though, knew what he was doing.’

‘You’re assuming it was a he?’ asked Maggie.

‘I am.’ Terri rubbed her gloved finger gently along the severed bone. ‘After he cut the sternum, like any good surgeon, he most likely used a retractor to spread her ribs and get at her heart. I’m not sure how much more the autopsy will tell us, but maybe something. If we can get positive ID by tomorrow morning, I’ll do the procedure in the afternoon. We’ve got nothing else scheduled.’ There was an unsettled edge to Terri’s normally cheerful voice. ‘You and Maggie want to join the party?’

‘Just leave word what time you want us there.’

Terri turned back to the body and continued her preliminary examination. McCabe glanced over to the black-and-white Crown Vic with the flashing lights and the Portland PD slogan, PROTECTING A GREAT CITY, emblazoned in gold on its rear fender. Some days, he thought, we keep that promise better than others. A dirty-looking man of indeterminate age was leaning against the back door. A uniformed officer stood nearby. Satisfied he wasn’t going to find anything else useful, McCabe walked over to join them. After a last look back at the body, Maggie followed.

‘This is the guy who found the body,’ the cop told them. ‘Says he’d be happy to tell us more about it if maybe we could come up with a little whiskey for him.’

‘Oh, really,’ said McCabe. ‘Well, I guess we’ll have to think about that.’

The man steadied himself against the car. He was a skinny little guy. Maybe five feet four. His eyes darted between McCabe and Maggie. Clearly he had no love for cops.

‘What’s your name?’ McCabe asked.

‘Lacey. Dennis Patrick Lacey.’

‘Got any ID, Dennis?’

The man handed McCabe a Maine driver’s license. It had expired three years ago. Lacey was fifty-five years old. McCabe would have guessed ten years older. He handed the license back.

‘Wrestling fan?’

‘Huh?’

McCabe pointed toward Lacey’s T-shirt. A picture of a grimacing wrestler and the letters wwe adorned the front.

‘Christ, no. They give you this crap at the shelter. It’s stuff nobody else wants.’

Lacey seemed coherent enough. McCabe glanced at Maggie, who flipped open a mini recording device.

‘This is Detective Margaret Savage, Portland, Maine, Police Department. The time is 9:54 P.M., September 16, 2005. The following is an interview recorded in a vacant lot off Somerset Street, Portland, Maine, between Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe, also of the Portland PD, and Mr. Dennis Lacey, residing at… Mr. Lacey, can you tell us where you live?’

‘Wherever I can doss down.’

McCabe began. ‘Would you tell us what you saw tonight?’

‘I didn’t have nothing to do with it.’

‘We don’t believe you did,’ McCabe said as gently as he could. ‘We just need to know what you saw to help us find whoever did do it.’

Lacey looked at McCabe as if trying to gauge to what degree he could be trusted. He finally shrugged and began speaking. ‘Aw, jeez, it was awful.’ McCabe could hear traces of a brogue under the man’s slur, its lilting rhythms reminding him of his own Irish grandparents. ‘Warm nights like this,’ Lacey said, ‘I sometimes sneak into the scrap yard. Just to sit. Look at the stars. Have a few drinks. Read a few poems. If I can afford it, maybe I bring something to eat.’

‘You read poems?’ Maggie asked. ‘What poems would those be?’

Lacey reached into his back pocket and pulled out a dirty, well-worn paperback copy of Yeats. He handed it to Maggie. ‘I’m a sailor,’ he said, slurring his words only a little. ‘Able seaman… or I was. Not so able anymore. I spent lot of nights at sea staring at the stars, did a lot of reading.’

‘You read Yeats?’ she asked.

‘Him and a few of the other Irish poets. I like the sound of the old words,’ he said. ‘These days, I’m all alone, y’know, and words are my only company. Nobody bothers me here or tells me to shut my yap.’

Lacey began to recite, stumbling over only a few of the words. I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade…